Senior Year Stress

By Charlie Glazier

     Glenelg’s Seniors have already caught the case of “senioritis” for this 2017-2018 school year. Many students during this time of year experience stress over college and application process. The date for the application varies by state and school. Ten out of ten of the Seniors interviewed from Glenelg High School  said they have experienced some form of stress due to Senior year.

    The time it takes some students to apply to colleges can drastically differ per student. When interviewing twelfth grade student, Brittany Anderson, she states that “It only took me ten minutes to finish my applications.” This contrasts with the opinions of Amy Smith, another twelfth grade student, when she states “ Applications took me a long time.” Smith goes on to say that she has put in a lot of time, work, and energy into her applications to ensure her applications are good quality. The application process time can depend on how skilled of a writer a student is, how prepared they are to write the college essays, and how many schools they are applying to. For instance, if a student is set on one school being the one they attend and they do not apply to any other schools, the application process will take then much less time. Most students started the process over the summer.  

     When asking the students how they feel about the application process the common answer revolved around the idea that they were putting so much effort, time, and money into essays that they might not even receive admission for. The average cost of a college application is $37.88 as stated by a survey done by World Market. The students had a very wide range of prices they had paid for applications so far, from thirty to hundreds of dollars. Time management and organization is important when applying due to the amount of work a student is putting into the applications. The overwhelming majority of students were more anxious about getting in and felt pressured about acceptance than any other aspect of the process.

     Ryan Davis, Amy Smith, and Brittany Anderson all agreed that teachers like Mr. Faran, Dr. Burnett, Mrs. Nunemaker, and Mr. Male all have been extremely helpful in the application process. All of the staff, administration, and other peers of the students interviewed are said to have all lend a helping hand in recommendations, peer review, and application help. Mrs. Ohanian has a workshop dedicated to helping students with college applications. The teachers are all said to be trying to help with anything they can to better their students applications and have been planned lessons around college essay writing.
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     By using these resources and teacher advice given to you by the school, hopefully students feel less inclined to be stressed during this time period. Students should also remember that not everyone gets into their top choice of a school and that putting your best effort forth in the application will help you to succeed. All of the students interviewed also all agreed on the point of them being excited to enter the new chapter of their education and except the freedom and new responsibilities that will follow. The stress of the application season is temporary and the relief of college acceptance will make up for all of the hard work the student have achieved. The concept of “senioritis” is also said to be very real as these students are anxious to move on to bigger and better places in the world.